World War Z - Film Review

*CAUTION: This review contains spoilers for World War Z. If you haven't seen it and wish to do so, proceed with caution.*

The immeasurable delays in production of World War Z has meant the resulting product has been spat out at a big time for the zombie.

Earlier this year saw Warm Bodies attempt to turn zombies into a replacement for the sparkly facsimiles of vampires in Twilight. More successful - critically and commercial - are AMC mega-hit TV show The Walking Dead and the critically successful PS3 exclusive video game The Last Of Us.

After many years lurching around as a cult concern, the works of the last decade or so have seen zombies become big entertainment business. It's a mood that has raised expectations for this - a big-budget realisation of the New York Times' best-selling book of the same name.

Or at least it should have in theory. In reality, various re-writes, re-shoots, production delays, arrests by the Hungarian authorities and general uncertainty since Brad Pitt's production company won the film rights in 2007 have led to the production seemed doomed to being a Hollywood Turkey in the eyes of many.

Critical reception has been mixed, with some loving and some hating the film. But the actual film itself has a feel of somewhere in the middle.

For a zombie film, there's a surprising lack of blood. It's remarkable how coy the film is about showing blood, when the zombies and the 15 rating indicate they shouldn't be that worried about broadcasting it.

The zombies themselves are more of the sprinting dead variety that are previously notable for use in the 28 Days Later and the more recent Dawn of the Dead remake. It works for the scope of the film in a way because they have some impressive set-pieces with them.

This is evident from the first whistle. Barely have the final bars of the Muse track Isolated System played out over the finish of the opening titles do the zombies raise their heads, overwhelming Philadelphia (well, Glasgow) and forcing the world into the film's paradigm.

The first part of the film is impressive, linking from set-piece to set-piece with aplomb. After their home city Philadelphia is obliterated by zombies, the main character Gerry Lane (Pitt) and his family (Mirelle Enos, Abigail Hargrove and Sterling Jerins) are on the run, wandering into the path of another zombie invasion further up the East Coast in Newark, New Jersey.

Here, they just manage to escape the apartment building they were holed up in by the skin of their teeth, in a scene eerily reminiscent of one from the first series of The Walking Dead, only with the rescue ending that one didn't have.

Gerry is revealed to be an ex-UN investigator and is told that, to keep his family on a safe boat out in the middle of Atlantic, he has to go back into the fold to help them figure out where the virus originated.

Pitt's character is a strange one. He is obviously very intelligent and does well to figure out the correct answers to various situations and scenarios, and he is certainly a good fit for the abundance of screen time the script gives him. But he often has moments of incredible stupidity that, in some cases, cause these problems.

The first of these comes in a dark and rain-saturated army base in South Korea, when he keeps his mobile phone on and the ringing duly attracts a small horde of undead.

This visit is the first in a 3-pronged travelogue against the end of the world. In SK, he learns of the first patients there, a way the virus has spread, the idea that burning them is the best neutralisation along with head shots, and that North Korean citizens have removed all of their teeth in a touch to escape.

After barely making it out of South Korea, Gerry heads across Asia to Jerusalem, where Israel is now completely fortified with a gigantic wall. The head of Mossad Jurgen Warmbrumm (Ludi Boeken) informs him that, as soon as they heard the mention of Indian soldiers having to fight the undead, they elected to hide. So far it's worked.

Outside the wall that is keeping them and several thousand refugees safe is several thousand ravenous zombies. This leads to a spectacular action piece, as the noise of new arrivals thinking their safe leads to a mountain of undead that rises higher and higher before coming over the wall and into the city.

In the trailers, it looked quite dumb but here, in it's full glory, its incredible spectacle. It is certainly impressive to watch zombies climbing over the wall and falling into the city before dusting themselves off and launching themselves at the general populace.

Gerry finds himself in the company of an Israeli Segen (Daniella Kertesz) who he has to amputate after a zombie bites her on the arm. Somehow, this works, and they make it onto the last plane out of Israel before the airport is overran by the zombie horde.

With that escape, Gerry's boss Secretary General Thierry (Fana Mokoena) directs him and his plane to Cardiff to use a WHO lab to help try and develop a vaccine for the uninfected population. Unfortunately, on the way, a zombie hidden on board the airplane is unleashed and soon enough the whole plane is a mass of rioting undead.

This leads to Gerry resorting to desperate and perhaps ill-thought measures, as he chucks a grenade bought along by the soldier and beds down as the plane falls from the sky, spewing zombies and baggage across the landscape below.

So far, the film has been quite good and it seems that, despite everything, they'd made it work.

This, however, is the end of the road for that theory. If it had ended here, it would've been stupidly abrupt but actually have worked quite well.

Instead, Gerry awakes impaled by a piece of fuselage amid the wreckage of their destroyed jetliner. The Segen duly escorts him to the WHO lab which is home to several doctors (Peter Capaldi, Pierfrancesco Favino, Ruth Negga and Moritz Bleibtreu) and several zombies.

This is the bit that feels a bit forced, given that this section was entirely re-written and re-shot, and which forced a 7 month delay to the film's release.

This is a noticeable dynamic change, with the rush and the fast pace of trying to leg it from zombies is sacrificed in favour of a gentler pace that loses a lot of energy. Plus a lot of the zombies waiting in the lab feel a bit... weird. They move like bad dancers in a nightclub, or in one case, teeth chattering in a similar fashion to the Were-Rabbit from the Wallace & Gromit feature film.

Anyway, now he's here, Gerry has decided that injecting himself with a lethal virus works as a camouflage-style vaccine that disguises him and makes him undetectable to the zombies, as he noted a few times while out in Jerusalem.

Getting to the biohazard lab means getting past a shitload of zombies, but somehow Pitt manages it and is able to prove the merits.

There's even time for a lengthy and absolutely pointless plug for Pepsi before he returns a hero that has given the human race a fighting chance for the likely sequel.

The whole thing leaves a very strange atmospheric. The first part of the film flows very well and has some terrific action sequences. But after the plane crash that brings the film to Wales, the film loses a lot of it's energy and feel. It all leads to a final act that is a bloated and incoherent mess that doesn't feel like it belongs from the same film.

Any sequel - and let's face it, the box office gross means there will be one - should use more of its zombies and try and avoid any messy rewrites. With any luck they'll have learnt some of their lessons with this one.

3.5/5

The Killers at Wembley Stadium - Live Review

"They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But that is a crock of shit because tonight The Killers are at Wembley Stadium!"

So says Brandon Flowers, loudly and happily as the night approaches its final stages. But its a celebration for his band - barely 10 years after first taking to a stage in this country, The Killers have made it to the biggest one the UK has to offer.

It's an impressive list of contemporaries they find themselves in. As a slightly bizarre tribute song to Wembley hinted, the stadium has welcomed such acts as Queen, U2, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Oasis, et all down the years, as well as more modern arrivals like Foo Fighters, Green Day, Coldplay and Muse.

With the Vegas band having sold out 13 arena shows last autumn and played headline festival sets in the UK for years, it feels like a natural step to make the jump into such a venue. They prove this almost immediately, as Brandon Flowers serenades the venue solo with Sam's Town intro Enterlude before the opening chords of When You Were Young sends 75,000 people into glorious delirium and pyro explodes left, right and centre.

The band certainly has the back catalogue for this show. Spaceman and Smile Like You Mean It are delightful indie anthems that get the stadium vocals. They're also joined by lesser known songs such as Battle Born song The Way It Was and earlier album tracks This River Is Wild and Bling (Confession of a King), which more than hold their own in this humungous environment.

The setlist is honed from months of touring. The cover of Joy Division's Shadowplay, accompanied by a monstrous laser show, slides into Miss Atomic Bomb - and a huge cloud of pyro - and the knockout one-two of Human and Somebody Told Me. This being stadiums - the former of those two has its own galaxy of lasers zipping across the venue, while the latter has an exciting bass-led intro that slides into the actual song.

The usual stadium rock touches are also around - fans holding up their mobile phones and lighters for the chill piano ballad Here With Me, while Dave Keuning and Ronnie Vannucci play mesmerising and brilliant solos before the jaunty From Here On Out.

Flowers on the other hand acts as the ringmaster, leading the crowd through extended sing-alongs of a cover of I Think We're Alone Now and From Here On Out, whipping up the crowd while strumming the bass in For Reasons Unknown, and bouncing around with the frenzied crowd.

The surprise comes when the band launch into an ode to Wembley after A Dustland Fairytale. It's an unexpected touch that is simultaneously hit and miss but it somehow works, and it certainly adds to the celebratory air of occasion that this band has, through all the solo projects, style blunders and fun with the critics, made it to such a huge environment.

After this the main set is a run through of hits, culminating in All These Things That I've Done. The songs "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" chant has finally found a room big enough to hold it, while an avalanche of confetti blankets the standing zone.

The band returns for a 4 song encore, split 50/50 between Hot Fuss and Battle Born. The title track from the latter is extended to preposterous lengths, with pyro and confetti zipping all over the place as Flowers high-fives the front rows and Keuning shreds his guitar to bits.

And all this before the high-point for many - the song that started this journey, no less. It is incredible to think that Mr Brightside is the first song the band ever wrote, but it's still going strong, and it is certainly right at home in this cavern of steel and concrete. Here it brings the curtain down on the evening, with one final crazy mosh for the audience that responds with suitable delirium.

Such a marvellous evening's entertainment has proved what fans of the band have been saying for years - The Killers are in the big leagues. Although where they go from here is anyone's guess.

The only complaints can really be for the hardcores gutted they didn't see the band play a few surprise rarities in an after-show gig at the Relentless Garage across town. But here, the band have delivered a fantastic evening.

4/5

Supporting the band for this big show were The Gaslight Anthem and James.

James opened the show and delivered a tight set of songs from their 90s heyday, with singer Tim Booth delivering some amusing observations and crazy dancing to go with their pleasant music.

The New Jersey-based Gaslight Anthem may well have been a better fit the week before when Springsteen was in town - and indeed, they have performed with The Boss. They took a few songs to warm up but the quality of their songs significantly improved the further their performance carried on.

Newcastle United History 101

Season 2008/09 was not a happy or productive time for Newcastle United.

It had all started so promisingly - 4 points from tricky looking games with Manchester United and Bolton despite a raft of injuries, some good looking signings in Danny Guthrie and Jonas Gutierrez and a sense we could, at long last, get a simple top 10 finish.

Then everything imploded. Kevin Keegan resigned after a ridiculous fall out with Director of Football Dennis Wise, leading to an awful whirlwind that chewed up and spat out Joe Kinnear, Charles N'Zogbia, Alan Shearer and, ultimately, Newcastle's Premier League status.

There are various middling reasons for the club's relegation - hair-brained tactics, poor signings, bad managerial appointments, incompetent owners, bad luck, a failure to score one goal or keep out one goal in games against strugglers - but the memories provoke various painful recollections.

Thankfully, season 2012/13 did not end in a preposterous relegation that had been threatened. But it's not as if the club has provided any knowledge they haven't learned the lessons of recent history.

It's weirdly fitting to have these comments in the week the club has discussed the history in retrieving old cast-iron gates from Sir John's Hall house, even if some Toon Army fans dispute the actual iconic status of said gates.

But the re-appointment of Joe Kinnear - unconfirmed by the club but loudly trumpeted by the man himself - is not exactly a positive omen.

There are two ways the club has not learned history - returning to a structure that we deployed in 08/09, to great success, and returning Kinnear to his position.

This is slightly harsh as it is arguable Kinnear could have kept us up. We lost our Premier League status in the run after he left, where we picked up just six points in 13 games. It is conceivable that the security of a stable(ish) appointment in the manager's hotseat could have given us at least the one more point that would've kept the team up, maybe even more.

But this is not praise, and merely a comment that having 4 managers in 1 season was ultimately a huge factor in our relegation. Poor tactics, poor self-awareness, repeated excuses, calling journalists fuckers and cunts in the same press conference, and mispronouncing players names is hardly a great omen.

Be interesting to see him pronounce the name of our French centre back Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa.

His new position is that of director of football - a role that has always struck me as one of the most pointless roles in football. The manager and scouts are the men best suited to run transfers, as they will liase to find talent to fill in the gaps in their squad. Getting somebody to do this for you seems fairly pointless, because of the fact there is nothing to stop manager and scout doing this.

Alan Pardew and Graham Carr operate in the manager and scout roles on Tyneside, and found the talent that fuelled the surprise success of 2011-12. Following the great drop down the league a year after, the club had to change tack. The ideal option would've been a new manager, or failing that, some new tactical theories to help work on things.

Although the club agreed they needed a new direction after such a disaster of a campaign, reverting to the structure that led to the disastrous relegation season is not it.

In that season, Dennis Wise was bought in as a Director of Football, with various scouts looking for players while he and Kevin Keegan were supposed to discuss targets. Instead, Wise bought several players we didn't need as a favour to shifty South American agents, while wilfully blocking players Keegan actually wanted, leading to the resignation and various truths exposed in a tribunal.

This situation is ultimately where the fiasco that was the 2008/09 season begun. Unfortunately, after a few years, it seems the board wants to reinstate such a paradigm. This is a flawed arrangement that struggled to work the first time around and just shows all signs pointing as failure the second time around.

Mike Ashley has certainly developed a somewhat unsurpassed level for PR bollocks since his buyout of the Toon Army some 2 years before the trapdoor opened. It remains a true miracle he has overtaken Freddy Shepherd, for whom bad publicity was the only publicity, in the fuck-up stakes.

But after a litany of errors that have ranged for poor managerial appointments to never putting in any more money than the minimum, and arranging a deal with the truly detestable Wonga.com, errors in judgement like this are so common place you almost tend to forget to notice them after a while.

It is hyperbolic to suggest this situation is about to lead to the club repeating the litany of mistakes that sent the team tumbling downwards. Certainly, one can see talk of boycotts as excessive.

But it is hardly a move in an acceptable direction, and one that provokes more questions than answers amongst a fanbase getting more and more agitated before the fixtures even come out. The chief  question among all this surely being "What the hell was Ashley thinking when he came up with this bollocks?"

The publicity-shy Ashley surely has to, at some point, justify an increasingly outlandish series of boobs that seem to help the club in no way whatsoever.

Governments and PRISM: What Is The Limit?

Chances are that the people who use internet products are not quite as aware as to who could be reading the data they leave.

If the mountain of data that consists of every Tweet, Facebook status, Google search, YouTube video, Skype call, MSN conversation, Hotmail e-mail etc. made in this world each day took on physical form, it would blanket entire continents and stretch beyond the stratosphere.

Imagine if this data was tapped into. Anyone that wished to use it could find anything to hang dirt upon any living citizen, without telling the difference between legitimate crime and one word in a sequence of many. But that fear is less so much conspiracy as it is everyday reality. Advertisers receive data everyday to help with their targeting, from Google adverts for products to iTunes recommending you albums to buy.

But it’s not just this premise where information is traded. This week, the United States government has confirmed they have significant access to the world’s social media under their PRISM program. Although Google and Facebook have denied it, the letters reveal the government still has possession of the data.

In unhelpful news for citizens this side of the Atlantic, the government’s GCHQ – who are already trying to implement similar legislation – have permission to use it for their own ends here.

This is all supposedly in the aim to prevent terrorist activity and maintain our nation’s security. But it’s not actually clear what terrorist activity it has prevented, given the American National Security Agency has not said so.

 

Plus it can also be used to stop ‘enemies’ whose only real threat is to be opposition – a crime we decry when it happens in other countries. One example is the Fox News journalist whose e-mail and phone call records were seized for trying to do his job. And as much as Fox News earns much deserved criticism for some of their reporting, it’s hardly liberal to respond by spying on them in such depth and detail.

One of the internet’s original architects, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has commented that he feels the values of privacy are being eroded from his construction.

But this is evidently modern society – with the citizens of the Earth, or at least, the Western world, so keen to share their lives with each other online, there is a voluntary goldmine people can harvest. And not even the flimsy Facebook Privacy settings can save this.

Cliché dictate all of these discussions should mention George Orwell’s breathless dystopic masterpiece 1984. Certainly, this is a perfect realisation of the conspiracy of omnipotent forces observing our every move, but it is doubtful it was foreseen we would do this voluntarily with companies who we let follow us in favour of us getting nothing at all other than being the target.

And all this comes before the routine surveillance of bank cards, fingerpints, passport and all other devices.

Talk like this makes it easy to make people believe in conspiracy theories. In one case it is easy to try to hold onto a rational view because, if such a thing can prevent terrorism, then it is legitimately saving lives. But it is hard to avoid being paranoid knowing everything you say online in any context is potentially in the threat of being seized upon, regardless of motive.

Plus its not so long ago the government was renowned for leaving various high security files in taxis, trains, bins, McDonald’s – in one case, sensitive personal data was left on a roundabout near Exeter Airport. The implications of recklessness with this information could be monstrous, and knowing the reliability of the government we can hardly be confident something won’t go missing.

In the meantime, it also points to an age where you have to monitor what you say. The only way privacy can now exist appears to be if you avoid the internet altogether, and by becoming reliant on the sort of technology spy films use. But as long as you’re plugged in, the chances of that are at best remote and at worst non-existent.

 

This is arguably long overdue given that Twitter is a minefield of ill-informed and potentially libellous conversation. But that doesn't mean to say it's a helpful proposition to contend with.

 

This is also a hammer blow for the credibility of governments. It can be hard to say you are trying to protect liberties while doing this, and it puts questions on a variety of matters.

A big overall reaching question is one asking to what limit this will go to. If those at the top can now monitor everything we say, when will they stop?